The rich are different from you and me

Monday

Nov 12, 2012 at 12:01 AMNov 12, 2012 at 11:24 AM

American television has no monopoly on banality. Proof can be found on "Made in Chelsea" (8 p.m. on Style, TV-14), an import from the U.K. that documents stylists and party planners in a rich London neighborhood.

American television has no monopoly on banality. Proof can be found on "Made in Chelsea" (8 p.m. on Style, TV-14), an import from the U.K. that documents stylists and party planners in a rich London neighborhood.

As on too many Bravo series, they greet one another with air kisses (on both cheeks) and clink Champagne glasses while scheming about new parties and who will be invited and who won't. Same old tedium, different accents. I'm not ashamed to admit that 10 minutes into the proceedings, I was fantasizing about characters from "The Walking Dead" invading the neighborhood and going about their grim business.

"Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream" on "Independent Lens" (10 on WGBH) looks at an ultra-wealthy neighborhood from a very different perspective. The film focuses on 740 Park Ave., a single building in New York that is home to the highest concentration of billionaires in America. It also looks at life on another Park Avenue €' located five miles away in the South Bronx €' that runs through one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States.

The film juxtaposes these two streets with the same name to discuss the ever-increasing concentration of wealth among a tiny fraction of Americans, a trend that has accelerated over the past generation. According to a survey from 2010, the richest 400 families control more wealth than the bottom 150 million citizens. The filmmakers argue that this fact, and the political dynamics that have contributed to it, has destroyed even the illusion of the American dream of social mobility.

— The documentary series "I Didn't Do It" (9 on ID, TV-14) debuts, recounting harrowing tales of innocent suspects who were convicted and faced long sentences based on faulty evidence, unreliable eyewitness accounts and a justice system often motivated more by bureaucratic inertia than justice.

— The trans-Atlantic hype for "Skyfall" knows no limits. Richard Hammond hosts "Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars" (8:30 on BBC America). Gee, I hope they don't forget the shameless product placement for the 1974 AMC Hornet in "The Man With the Golden Gun"! It was a terrible car. But the movie was worse!